OMG that picture! That's my husband's cousin from waaaaaaaaaaaay back in the day. I'd been scanning my MIL's photos and I guess Chrissy must have jumped into the package, like some kind of unexpected Flat Stanley!

I'm glad you liked the package. I had a good time making it.

And you can toss Chrissy's picture in the garbage. I'm glad she made it to Canada.

RovingAnarchist, that chocolate Dalek was DAMN good!!! Where did you get that???

Sorry, I felt like Kanye for a second there...Yo, moriarT. I'm really happy for you; I'mma let you finis. But Roving had one of the best items in this swap of all time! One of the best items of all time!"

Whoo hooo! Got my package from RovingAnarchist today! (BTW, my package to Roving is either still in, or just left, Chicago. I just tracked it tonight.)

I think I have been stalked electronically, and I love it!

"Hi Amy! Merry 'Craft My Fandom!!' I hope everything is all in one piece, and not melted. If your ever in the mood to get strange looks, go to a beauty supply store for a Styrofoam head and when they ask if you're a student, tell 'em you're building a zombie. In April. Some folks have no imagination. Cheers, Milo" Here we have a knitted TARDIS washcloth and a chocolate Dalek, which I will exterminate tomorrow!

Holy crap, I tried making one of these myself about four years ago and it didn't turn out! I was trying to bleach the Vulcan hand gesture onto a black hoodie and the fabric wasn't taking the bleach. Obviously, RovingAnarchist is smarter than me, because she used fabric paint! I never thought about it myself, because that would be too obvious.

Holy crap again...I was thinking about doing a zombie head like this for Halloween this year! I even had a site bookmarked on my computer with directions on how to get it zombified just right. She beat me to it! The head fell off the sign in transit, but all I need is a little more hot glue and I can shove this baby's noggin back onto the screw in the sign and it will be secure again.

THANK YOU, RovingAnarchist! I loved this swap with you, and I hope the postal service gets your package to you soon!

In January, I saw this post over at Geek Crafts (http://geekcrafts.com/15758-geeky-winter-hat-patterns-and-diys/) that leads to a page over at Instructables, and I bookmarked it because I knew my niece and I would need our own TMNT hats. (She's almost five and decided all by herself that she likes TMNT. Me, I like them too, but I'm just looking for an excuse to wear a fun hat. And well, her love for Spider-Man was a seed I planted.)

Obligatory geek picture of moi and my Rafael hat.

I did cheat slightly and I used felt instead of polar fleece I had an awesome gift card to AC Moore and they sell large folded, thick pieces of felt. It sewed very nicely and it wasn't like the thinner, individually sold felt pieces meant for lesser crafting.

I did find a few things about this pattern I will do differently for an adult sized hat:

Make the mask longer and thinner.Sew the eyes onto the mask before sewing the mask onto the hat.Make the ear flap ties longer.

The directions on the page are easy enough, but it took me a little longer than it should have, because I kept going back to re-read the directions, and I still managed to make a few (fixable) mistakes. And it's easy enough to adapt. While working on the TMNT hat tonight, I realized something else. That pattern is very forgiving when it comes to sewing straight lines.

For example: say you're not the world's greatest sewing (I'm raising my hand here), and you don't get the earflap piece sewn to the beanie part completely straight. If your sew line is a little wonky, it's alright because you're going to put that mask on straight and it will actually straddle both the entire earflap piece and the beanie part at the same time. It's going to hide your wonky lines.

My niece's Spider-Man hat.

The Spider-Man hat is just a variation of the TMNT hat. It obviously doesn't have a mask piece, but the eye pieces are sewn on separately. I first sewed the white "lens" to the black felt with my machine, and then I did a series of tiny black hand stitches around the outside of the black to sew it to the red.

For this hat, there's no hiding a wonky sew line if you get it crooked. But the directions/pattern there at Instructables makes this a wildly easy design to change for different characters. I'm thinking I may need an R2-D2 hat and a stormtrooper hat too.